


The Past, the Future, the Present

by thricetroubles



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Gen, No Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1930866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thricetroubles/pseuds/thricetroubles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when the Doctor was not busy saving worlds with Clara, or perfecting his calculations for the position of Gallifrey, he would sit in the TARDIS’s library with a random book opened on his laps and let his thoughts drifted across time and space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Past, the Future, the Present

**Author's Note:**

> Title: _The Past, the Future, the Present_  
>  Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and _Torchwood_ are the properties of BBC.  
>  Warning: Non-Beta'd. **Spoiler-free** : Unless you counted spoilers from _The Fires of Pompeii_ and _Torchwood: Children of Earth_ , no spoiler otherwise since the author had not (and would not) read the leaked Season Eight scripts.

Sometimes, when the Doctor was not busy saving worlds with Clara, or perfecting his calculations for the position of Gallifrey, he would sit in the TARDIS’s library with a random book opened on his laps and let his thoughts drifted across time and space.

Needless to say this was a rather new hobby of his, unique to this regeneration. Sitting there, doing nothing. His previous selves would have been utterly terrified by this solitude, but this Doctor liked to ponder. It was only as he reached the impossible grand old age of over 2,000 that the Doctor began to appreciate the liberating experience of mind-wandering and flowing with thoughts about things big and small, about absolutely everything in general and nothing in particular.

And, time after time, the Doctor found himself returning to the contemplation of his face. 

It was not a bad face. Clara said it was dignified, a face that could “easily carry all the melodrama of your ‘I am the Doctor’ lines” (direct quotation courtesy of Clara). Human beings tended to associate authority figures with maturity, and the appearances of his Tenth and Eleventh selves did not really help to convince humans that he was a doctor, much less the Doctor. So dignified seems to be good, for less time would be needed to convince humans from now on. Pink, on the other hand, said the Doctor got the look of an eagle owl and the hair of a silver fox. While the Doctor did not quite understand all these Earth animal references, he could tell from Pink’s tone and body language that this remark was complimentary. And since he was vain, the Doctor could not deny that he was secretly pleased to hear this.

Oh, yes, the Doctor was now old enough to admit that he could be vain when he wanted to, too, thank you very much. 

What interested him more was how he ended up with this face. The Doctor knew that he had no conscious power in deciding the face. If he could decide, it was very likely he would not have chosen this face. Although the Doctor did like his face (not the hair though – ginger would have been nice), the thought that the next time he meet Jack the Captain would surely try to kill him on the spot was not a comforting nor a pleasing one, despite the Doctor’s confidence that both would survive the incident somehow. (But whether he would still be breathing in this body? That would be another matter.)

Except that, ending up with this face was such a coincidence – far too big a coincidence – to be a completely random outcome of the regenerative process. 

A face shared by Lucius Caecilius Iucundus of Pompeii and John Frobisher. 

Looking into the mirror and seeing an older John Frobisher looking back at himself felt, to the Doctor, sometimes like a cosmic joke. Although he had never met Frobisher in person, the Doctor did do a search on Frobisher on TARDIS’s computer upon hearing the tragic news about Torchwood. In spite of his resulting disgust at the British Government, the Doctor found himself sympathizing with Frobisher to a certain degree: a mere human being, constrained by circumstances, facing an enemy so much more overwhelmingly powerful than himself, to be forced to sacrifice children to save others and play his master’s political games. To be forced to choose the impossible. 

At the end, to be forced to drown his own family in blood as a father in hope that his children could escape a fate most horrible. A fate that he was selfish enough to assign to other children in the name of the so-called greater good, but never, never to his own.

And **be condemned**.  
 **The Sinner**.  
 **Be judged** by all those who knew him and knew him not. 

Were they so different, he and Frobisher? Facing off a mighty enemy, drowning his whole planet in blood to save the universe, but never, never quite saving his people from a fate more excruciating than death. Except that, after the Time Lock and the tiny pocket universe, there was no Time Lord left in this universe, this reality, to condemn him. 

The void in the universe was his condemnation enough. 

And well, not that he had not been routinely destroying fleets after fleets of hostile alien forces aspiring to universal domination. He was not wanted in fourteen different star systems for war crimes _for nothing_. Of course the “war criminal” clause was open to debate: there were more star systems in the universe ready to declare him a hero and a protector than those who wanted him executed for getting in the way of their conquests of the galaxy. But the fact remained. More often than not, the Doctor’s brand of peace was one that could only be purchased with not only mountains of dead bodies but ruined planets. And the Doctor knew he was judged and condemned for this. 

And like Frobisher, he knew he was selfish: the same doom which he gave to many, he regretted about it enough to alter its course when he gave it to his own people. 

Judged by himself, condemned by those who did not know him. Knowing how occasionally masochistic he could be towards himself, the Doctor wondered whether his regeneration had not been determined by his subconscious – the lingering, persisting silent screams of _guilt_ that decided to brand his condemnation on his own face for all to see.

But this face was also Lucius Caecilius’s face. And if his regeneration had indeed been influenced by his subconscious, then his subconscious was probably also singing of _hope_. Curious, friendly and proud Caecilius who saw the TARDIS as a beautiful piece of art, the father who tried so pitifully to protect his family against what he could not even begin to understand. The Doctor recalled how Caecilius and his family, trapped, huddled in fear in a corner of their _atrio_ , when the ashes of Mt. Vesuvius came raining down. When it was the Doctor who brought the destruction of Pompeii to Caecilius’s door in the name of saving Earth.

Why did this theme sound so familiar? The destruction of an unwilling few for the safety of the unknowing majority. With the Doctor at the centre of the stage, dancing the dance of destruction and rebirth to the music of time and space _again_. Even the Doctor could only admit that if his life was a song, his would be a fugue: a long series of repetitions with variations after repetitions with variations.

But this interlude ended on a different note. The destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum was a fixed point in time, a fixed point brought about by the Doctor. But Caecilius and his family were saved. 

Four among thousands. A family. Pulled out of an inferno of blood and smoke and ashes. **Saved.**

The one that bore the Doctor’s face _and his family_. **Saved by the Doctor.**

The Doctor had never been so grateful for Donna’s interference when he first realized whose face he was now wearing. If he were to wear a face of a person he refused to save he would have been even more guilt-ridden. But now the Doctor had another reason to be thankful: Caecilius was his hope. His map to redemption. Maybe when the Time Lords finally return they would punish the Doctor, and it was most likely that their return would not change his enemies and his victims’ perceptions of him, but the Doctor would be freed from his own worst accusations. 

He would have pulled his people, and himself, out of the inferno of a never-ending war.

And if Frobisher was his past and Caecilius would be his future, then there was only one person he would be now.

He would be **the Doctor** , **the Saviour**.

**To live on with his guilt, to save Gallifrey and himself, and be saved in return.**

_You old gods of Gallifrey, those whose tales I heard by my Mother’s side when I was still a child, save us, save us!_  
 _You laws of time and space and the might of the whole order of creation, bend to my will and heed my commands! Gallifrey will be saved!_

 

Putting the book aside, the Doctor left the library and returned to the TARDIS’s control room. After running a final check on the equations, he pulled the lever with renewed determination, navigating the TARDIS towards the coordinates indicated by his calculations. 


End file.
